How North Korea Could Destroy The United States

National Security: The administration moves an advanced missile defense system to Guam because it knows a single low-yield nuke detonated at high altitude could send America back in time a hundred years.

The announcement Wednesday by the Defense Department that it would soon deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD), a missile defense system inherited from the Bush administration, to Guam underscores the seriousness of the threat from North Korea, whose actions, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel rightly said, "present a real and clear danger."

This move comes after the Obama administration reversed its previous scuttling of Bush administration plans to increase our ground-based interceptor force in Alaska and the deployment of two destroyers equipped with Aegis missile defense systems, the Decatur and the John McCain, to the region.

Some observers dismissed it as familiar bluster when North Korea's 28-year-old raging runt, Kim Jong-un, signed an order for North Korea's strategic rocket forces to be on standby to fire at U.S. targets in front of a map that included Austin, Texas, as a target.

But other observers are concerned that a specific target may not be what the possibly imploding North Korean regime may have in mind.

The three-stage missile North Korea launched last December that also orbited a "package," which experts say could be a test to orbit a nuclear weapon that then would be de-orbited on command anywhere over the U.S. and exploded at a high altitude, releasing an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). That would fry electronic circuitry and the nation's power grid.

This concern recently has been reinforced by a little-publicized study released in May 2011, titled "In the Dark: Military Planning for a Catastrophic Critical Infrastructure Event," by the U.S. Army War College that said a nuclear detonation at altitude above a U.S. city could wipe out the electrical grid for hundreds, possibly thousands, of miles around.

The satellite launched by Pyongyang coincided with a third round of nuclear tests described as a "nuclear test of a higher level," most likely referring to a device made from highly enriched uranium, which is easier to miniaturize than the plutonium bombs North Korea tested in 2006 and 2009, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Such an EMP device would not have to be particularly high yield. It would not be designed to create a big explosion, but to convert its energy into gamma rays, that generate the EMP effect.

See Also

The Republican majority's budget plan — enacted in a blitz of votes before lawmakers rushed home for spring break — tells us which Republican presidential hopefuls are serious about halting the nation's soaring debt. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against the ...

Regulation: A public Consumer Complaint Database solicits anonymous, unverified gripes against banks from consumers at the behest of Acorn front groups — despite studies showing such complaints are mostly baseless.The administration says the government-sponsored rumor mill is designed to ...

Iran: At the eleventh hour before the Tuesday deadline, Tehran negotiators predictably changed positions and demanded new concessions. Unfortunately, unlike Ronald Reagan, President Obama won't be walking away. As the world's leading terrorist sponsor state, which for years has sought nuclear ...

Propaganda: The overreaction by politicians and advocacy groups to Indiana's religious freedom law is distressing enough. Worse is the fact that big companies are now amplifying the disinformation campaign.Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn't the only business executive to condemn Indiana's law, but he was ...

Presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal is taking heat for proposing barring foreigners for belief in "radical Islam." But even the Obama administration is having to "raise awareness" about "child abuse" tied to such immigration and belief. "We shouldn't tolerate those who want to come and try to impose ...

Select market data is provided by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services terms. All times are Eastern United States. *Reflects real-time index prices.